A sense of speed

[Grumpy John]

Conveying a sense of speed in motorsport photography is very important, after all speed is what motorsport is all about.
Here are three images of go karts traveling at speed, all shot with different settings. I would be interested in opinions as to which one best convey a sense of speed.

#1

Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/4000
Av(Aperture Value) 2.8
ISO Speed 400


#2

Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/1250
Av(Aperture Value) 8.0
ISO Speed 400


#3

Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/320
Av(Aperture Value) 8.0
ISO Speed 100

[Isac]

#3. Simply because of the motion blur you've achieved and the wheel spin blur. I have heard that if you open up the aperture and use an even slower speed while panning you'll get even better results.

[Grumpy John]

Thanks Isac, I think I'll open up the aperture and work with shutter speeds in the 1/320 -1/640 range with ISO at auto. It will be a good day to practice my panning skills.

[Isac]

Good place to start John, but don't be afraid to drop the shutter speed to see what happens. You can always add a bit of wheel spin in PS

[Grumpy John]

Don't worry Isac, I'll be trying a lot of different settings.

[K1W1]

Three. The others have no sense of speed whatsoever.

[K1W1]

#3. Simply because of the motion blur you've achieved and the wheel spin blur. I have heard that if you open up the aperture and use an even slower speed while panning you'll get even better results.

1/125 second f11. He was probably doing 80 kph at the time.



at close to 300 kph you need somewhat faster shutter speed. 1/500 f8

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[Grumpy John]

He was probably going close to 30 kph at the time.



f9.0, 1/160, ISO 200.

[Isac]

Seems to give a good sense of motion John, nice capture.

[Grumpy John]

Maybe cropped a bit tight, what do you think?

[Isac]

Too tight John top and bottom, the positive and negative space is borderline but passes. If you showed more top and bottom, you would have to increase space on the sides to compensate. I think action such as this needs to be landscape orientation.

[Isac]

Just for fun, I played with #1 and added the motion blur to the BG and spin blur to the wheels. Now it's flying!!

[Grumpy John]

Better? If I go landscape there is not enough space for him to "ride in to".
This is a different image to the one previously posted.

[Isac]

That's a lot better than the OP. Great motion and god composition. Negative and positive space are good also. Nice shot!

[Grumpy John]

Thanks mate, the first image was edited before I learned about such things as positive space and negative space.

[petrochemist]

Your third definitely shows the most speed.

I've been working in motorsports for over 25 years & have managed to get a fair bit of practice at panning - when I can get out to play at the circuit. I have been known to practise by the road side too - which often caused drivers to brake. Airshows & boats can also give good practice
I've found karts a little more awkward to get good shots of than full size cars & bikes.

One bit of advise once you've got a couple of sharp shots for an event start reducing shutter speeds drastically, go beyond what you expect to manage & don't forget to follow through. Repeat many times at a range of speeds - A few will work out!

I don't think I pan anything but jets at speeds faster than 1/500s

Hydroplane at 1/90s:
Hydroplane by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

Formula 1 at 1/125s:
Monaco F1-26 by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

just walking at 1/8s
Panning portrait by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

[Isac]

All good advice for action panning Mike. Maybe a bit of extra space to the right of the hydroplane image like so (even more perhaps?). I hope you don't mind the edit

[Isac]

What are you using as the "alternative" and what OS do you have?

[petrochemist]

When I do post processing it's usually via FastStone on windows, but my home 'desktop' is now a Raspberry Pi running a unix variant. GIMP will run on it, but I've not got to grips with it.

[Isac]

Faststone is brilliant. I've used it for many years to do quick edits and as it's the fastest image viewer on the planet I use it to cull my images. Also to add highlights and text to images or screenshots for helping folks out or for tutorials. I was impressed with the writers when I asked them to be able to copy the exif data to the clipboard - they sent back the link to their software which included my request.

[Paul Mitchell]

The only way to achieve a sense of speed in a photograph is to ensure the background is horizontally blurred while the subject is as tack sharp as you can get. Otherwise the subject is just parked. For this shot I copied the photo and placed it on the top layer. On the bottom layer I cloned the water all around the object. Then I horizontally blurred the water quite a bit. Then on the top layer I just erased the water. So now he seems to be going much faster. The effect might be even better had it been a bright sunny day giving the water more texture. Same goes for the cyclist. I didnt spend any time on it otherwise I would have worked longer on the wheels and spokes than the entire image.

[Isac]

Great speed effect added here Paul. With the cyclist, I would suggest selecting the cyclist and adding a mask, then expanding that selection a few pixels and on the bottom layer, use Content Aware to remove the selected cyclist. That way, the edge of the cyclist doesn't show the blurred halo from the background. For the spokes I would use Spin Blur (in the Blur Gallery) and mask out any of the image which doesn't have the blur, like the bike frame and forks, legs, shoes chain etc. It's very realistic.